Is 'No Child Left Behind' Creating Test Taking Robots?

I’m not the least bit surprised, when thinking about the educational mandate called “,” that there is such a groundswell of movements across America demanding much more local control of school systems.

Parents are not dumb—they can see that NCLB is pretty much out of control, and getting more so every year.

No one can argue with the idea of teaching children to pass a test—up to a point.

It’s when the pass-the-test mania crosses any number of human lines in its zeal that we probably need to call a halt to this, or at least slow it down significantly.

, for one, is pretty much fed up with it all.

The ironclad demands of the NCLB system almost completely rule out the idea that, at the end of the day, we’re dealing with people here: teachers and students.

No matter how well students do in meeting this year’s goals, the class coming up, in all grades, will have a bigger mountain to climb, thanks to the rigid and unbending demands that, by school year 2014, 100 percent of students must meet 100 percent of all the program’s demands.

That is not only impossible, it’s unreasonable to place such demands on teachers and students alike.

Patrick Shaw says it’s time to be realistic.

“The standards need to be relaxed somewhat—in fact, a lot,” says Shaw.

“Although all of the Santee schools currently exceed the magic , one of our schools has already been forced into a performance-improvement program, because one of the federally mandated ethnic or social subgroups in that school didn’t quite meet the standard. Notices were sent to the school’s parents, saying the school was in that program, leading parents to think their kids’ school was no good, when in fact that isn’t the case at all.”

Let’s face facts.

We all know that there are teachers who should no longer be in a classroom—there are teachers who never should have been in a classroom to begin with.

But such teachers are a small minority within any school system.

The vast majority of people who go into teaching are there , and because they love it,.

Those very good teachers know how to motivate kids, how to think outside the box, how to get kids interested in school and study by making it something they want to do, rather than something they have to do.

Teaching to the test tends to destroy that, because the whole of teachers’ efforts have to go into passing that test—there is simply no time left to work with kids on anything else.

None of us—especially parents—want to admit this fact, but there are also students who should not be in a harsh, demanding, inflexible school program, because they are not equipped to do well in that environment. Not every student is going to do well in math and science, and they shouldn’t be forced into those disciplines. Some are more equipped to be writers, to be mechanics, to be something—anything—except nuclear physicists or rocket scientists.

But, under NCLB, teachers and students alike are shoehorned into the restrictive tunnel that leads to the Holy Grail of NCLB: Pass the test.

Is it any wonder that kids often grow frustrated and hate school? Often dropping out?

Under this system, we are raising a generation of kids who may (no guarantees here) do well on tests.

Are they ever going to be able to do well at anything else?

Like … life?